{"id":798165,"date":"2026-10-10T14:32:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T14:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/798165\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T14:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T14:32:13","slug":"rennie-identifies-the-difference-maker-in-all-blacks-sudden-high-ball-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/798165\/","title":{"rendered":"Rennie identifies the difference-maker in All Blacks’ sudden high ball success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Published: 5 hours ago | 10 October 2026 05:27 EDT <\/p>\n

mens<\/p>\n

international<\/p>\n

Harry Wilson of Australia (L) and Josh Lord of New Zealand compete for the ball during the rugby union Bledisloe Cup match between New Zealand and Australia at Eden Park in Auckland on October 10, 2026. (Photo by Michael Bradley \/ AFP via Getty Images) \"Google <\/a> <\/p>\n

A major area of criticism to come the All Blacks<\/a>\u2018 way during and following the Rugby\u2019s Greatest Rivalry series centred on their struggles under the high ball. No such criticism would come their way after 80 minutes of stellar high-ball play at Eden Park on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

While the Springboks dominated New Zealand<\/a> in the contestable kicking contest last month and built significant attacking momentum on the back of it, the boot was well and truly on the other foot in Auckland, with New Zealand deploying a barrage of contestables and winning a huge number of them.<\/p>\n

The backline all took turns chasing, with Jordie Barrett and Will Jordan<\/a> starring in the air against an Australian backline that bettered South Africa<\/a> in that department just two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

But following the match, Dave Rennie\u2019s praise was quickly directed at another aspect of the kicking game when the topic was raised in the post-match press conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought Cam (Roigard\u2019s) kicking was excellent and allowed us to put a lot of pressure on,\u201d the coach said. \u201cWe kicked a bit more off nine than we have been.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, as you guys know, receiving those kicks is difficult. I think receiving teams are catching one out of four. That\u2019s the nature of the game at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur guys did an excellent job at either winning it in the air or picking up scraps, and so that was a good shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Team Kicks \"Team <\/p>\n

1:8.5<\/p>\n

Kick To Pass Ratio<\/p>\n

1:7.3<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jordan, who finished the game as captain after Codie Taylor left the field, said \u201cthere was plenty of edge in camp throughout the week\u201d as the Kiwis sought to extend their famous Eden Park record and their reign as Bledisloe Cup holders.<\/p>\n

On the matter of the high ball, Jordan echoed what has become a common talking point that the game currently rewards the attacking team when kicking short and that adjusting the length of the kicks was a big factor in the Auckland<\/a> success. He also noted that Jordie Barrett\u2019s efforts to chase longer kicks led to dominant tackles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just stuck to the plan that we\u2019ve had the whole year around the retreat system,\u201d he explained. \u201cI feel that for a lot of the games that we\u2019ve played, it\u2019s worked pretty well. And then, there were a couple in South Africa where it didn\u2019t. I thought we did a good job to stick to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve felt pretty good all year about contesting when we\u2019re going forward, and I thought tonight, Cam did a great job with his kicking game to just pull it back five or so metres just to allow us to get up in the air; the likes of myself, Jordie, and Leroy (Carter).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always going to be a point of emphasis for us. So, it\u2019s a good win for us tonight, but it\u2019s going to be important moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published: 5 hours ago | 10 October 2026 05:27 EDT mens international Harry Wilson of Australia (L) and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-798165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}